I'm no anarchist nor know about all the technicalities involved, but at what point does Venezuela become vulnerable to invasions from countries which they share a border with (E.g. Brazil, Colombia)?
I'm assuming if you don't have enough money to run a country, you certainly don't have enough to protect the border and power the military.
It's way more likely that something like that would happen at the time Venezuela closed their borders and prohibited foreigners from leaving than now that they simply didn't pay some debit. It didn't then (got solved by diplomacy), it won't now.
Besides, Venezuela's military is large enough to be a threat to Brazil and Colombia. All on wars haven't happened on South America for a long time, it is very unlikely that one will simply happen between not-too-asymmetrical powers.
At least here in Brazil, the government would fall if it decided to send people to die there.
I won't pretend to know the details of Venezuela but this doesn't necessarily follow.
What they've done is default on a bond payment. That doesn't mean that they have no money. The article has a graphic that says they have $9bn in reserves (though no details).
What it does mean is that, of the money they do have, they chose not to meet a financial obligation. There will likely be repercussions of this move but defaulting and being broke are different things.
Now, of all the people you probably want to make sure are paid are your military. Not so much to stop invasions but because the words "military" and "coup" have gone together often enough in history.
You’re mixing up debts in foreign currencies and ones in national currency. The former is the issue. As long as the national currency is accepted and traded by the population (which they can effectively enforce upon them through taxation) then the state can simply sign a contract, flip some bits in the national accounting table and proceed that way. The problem here is that Venezuela has a very disfunctional market economy (it is bad enough under the champagne socialists, and the US being involved in geo-economic/imperialist opportunism there isnt helping them) and a large black market which is mostly denominated in US currency and to which the population is increasingly dependent upon. If the economy worsens, that could further undermine the national currency and weaken the central government. The US of course wants that to happen so they can install a puppet government and secure natural resources in the south american hemisphere. It’s really a mixture of corrupt centralized government making all the wrong policy decisions and nefarious outside influences.
Real concerns start to rise up about that on multiple levels, including some non-traditional military conquest type scenarios.
For example, how long does the rest of the world watch as Venezuela possibly descends into genocide and starvation? They're pretty close to starvation / famine now. Then if outside nations act, the ruling regime uses that as a tool to increase domestic patriotism to increase the power of said regime (if only temporarily). When Trump made the mistake of opening his mouth about Venezuela and the mess there, Maduro immediately utilized it for nationalistic purposes to give himself a small prop-up (Trump has lowered the volume since, on advice no doubt).
If Venezuela were to allow foreign nations in to help stabilize the country, what are the risks that those invited guests then plunder or annex (whether directly in a traditional sense, or by occupation & refusing to leave). From a very long historical perspective, that has to be taken seriously given the extraordinary energy resources of Venezuela. They've put themselves in a very precarious situation.
Judging from Zimbabwe's example, the rest of the world will watch it descend all the way down.
No private company wants to send in resources and investment just to see it nationalized. No government wants to buy oil with blood when they could get it more cheaply for cash on the open market. The most that would likely happen is covert support of rebels via third-party cutouts. For instance, the CIA (the US) might funnel resources through the existing US relationship with the Colombian national military, ostensibly to manage the FARC/ELN conflict and combat drug smuggling, but secretly also to smuggle supplies and dollars into Venezuela to support reformists.
The Venezuelan authorities depend on the military to keep themselves in power. So they will continue to fund the military even as the rest of the country disintegrates.
> at what point does Venezuela become vulnerable to invasions from countries which they share a border with (E.g. Brazil, Colombia)?
Why would Brazil or Colombia want to be bogged down in Venezuela? If it becomes a failed state and a haven for attacks on neighbors, raids against the forces using as a haven are likely, but no one (except maybe the US, because that's kind of our M.O.) is likely try to invade and occupy, even to establish a new regime and then hopefully leave.
Lived here my whole life, never seen anyone die in the street. Anyway a few people needing healthcare vs everyone literally starving, I know what I would take.
Politically and economically speaking? Hell yeah, just about the same if it were in any other continent, but not invading it for whatever reason. I honestly doubt any SA power would even send peace corps if the UN for some bizarre reason requested it.
The days of invasions are long gone, instead what you have is annexation actions like what Russia did with Crimea. Lots of people in Crimea are ethnically Russian, and they were tired of Ukrainian rule, so they sat by and let the Russians take over.
Militaries don't really prevent invasions. Border security is about more than just securing from outside belligerence. It also does things like keeping fishermen from fishing in your waters, drug cartels from operating freely, and the like.
